It has been found that amplitude and delay distortion resulting from multipath fading can, under certain conditions, be a major cause of transmission deterioration in both digital and FM radio communications systems. Experimental and analytical evidence indicate that outages of wideband digital systems, caused by this phenomenon (i.e., selective fading), may exceed system performance objectives. This means that techniques for handling flat fades, such as AGC, will not be adequate to maintain satisfactory wideband digital transmission, and that additional correction will be required. Even the use of space diversity techniques will not eliminate the problem associated with selective fading. The use of some form of equalization will still be required to achieve the desired level of system performance, (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,261,056. )
The problem, however, is that signal fading resulting from multipath transmission is basically unpredictable. Accordingly, the compensation introduced by a fade equalizer must be capable of automatically adapting to the changing signal conditions.